Author(s): Sara Douglass

Fantasy Fiction

In the time after the fall of the Roman Empire, when darkness and despair swept Christendom, a foolish monk found his way down to Hell. There he stole the Devil’ s favourite diadem, whereupon he made his way back to the mortal realm to wander for decades, increasingly maddened by his experiences. On his death, all knowledge of the location of the diadem died with him. Eventually the Devil noticed it was missing, and he was enraged. He lets loose the hounds of hell onto the Earth, that they might sniff the diadem out ... It is mid-twelfth century Europe and a young noblewoman, Evelyn Langtofte, joins an aristocratic household to attend Adelie, the wife of the Earl of Pengraic, one of the powerful Lords of the March - the dark Welsh borderlands. Then a plague that has swept Europe, now overtakes England. As life descends into a chaos of spreading plague and civil disorder, the Earl’s family dies. Evelyn travels with her cold, new husband - the Earl of Pengraic - to the English court. Here, as the months unravel, Evelyn begins to suspect not only the true nature of the plague - the Devil’s device to discover his diadem - but that her husband, the Earl of Pengraic, is far more than he appears. It seems the Devil not only sent his hounds to ravage earth, but he sent the hounds’ handler as well.